The amount of compensatory sweating depends on the patient, the damage that the white rami communicans incurs, and the amount of cell body reorganization in the spinal cord after surgery.
Other potential complications include inadequate resection of the ganglia, gustatory sweating, pneumothorax, cardiac dysfunction, post-operative pain, and finally Horner’s syndrome secondary to resection of the stellate ganglion.
www.ubcmj.com/pdf/ubcmj_2_1_2010_24-29.pdf

After severing the cervical sympathetic trunk, the cells of the cervical sympathetic ganglion undergo transneuronic degeneration
After severing the sympathetic trunk, the cells of its origin undergo complete disintegration within a year.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0442.1967.tb00255.x/abstract

Saturday, August 3, 2013

progressive hemifacial atrophy following elective sympathectomy for hyperhidrosis

Some authors consider the disease a variant of mor- phea because the histologic changes are identical to deep scleroderma.2 The possible etiologies include sympathetic denervation, trauma, vascular malformations, immunologic abnormality, heredi- tary disease, or infection by a slow virus.3 To our knowledge, this is the first report of a young patient with a possible association between Parry-Romberg syndrome and thoracoscopic sympathectomy.  

Theoretically, thoracoscopic sympathectomy may cause 2 of the aforementioned etiologies of Parry- Romberg syndrome: sympathetic denervation and trauma. Thoracoscopic sympathectomy is a surgical technique for the treatment of palmar hyperhidrosis.  The operation ablates the upper thoracic sympathetic nerve ganglions responsible for nerve stimulation of the sweat glands of the upper limbs. The most significant complication is Horner’s syndrome, which results from injury to the stellate sympathetic ganglion.7 In a summary of sympa- thectomies in 67 children and adolescents, complications included Horner’s syndrome in 1 patient (1%) and varying degrees of compensatory sweating in 30 patients (45%).8

Despite the evidence from animal studies that sympathectomy can result in facial atrophy, to our knowledge, there were no previous reports of such an association in humans. 

Cutis. 2004;73:343-344, 346.